Terms of Usage and Conditions of Service

By using this website (TravelBlog.org), you agree to abide by the following simple rules and guidelines;

We reserve the right to edit any and all content that has been placed on TravelBlog.

We reserve the right to modify these Terms of Service from time to time without notice and are retro active.


General Rules

  1. You certify that you are 13 years of age or over. All those individuals under 13 years of age will need a full release form from their parents before posting any material. This is in compliance with the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act of 2000 (COPPA).
  2. All content posted at this site are the sole opinion and responsibility of the poster.
  3. When you add any content to our system, you are granting a soft license to the site to use it - this is non-exclusive, you reserve all rights for any other use of your material.
  4. You should hold the right to post any content in any form on our system, this means that if you are not the copyright holder of the content (photograph, text, etc) you must ensure that it is content in the public domain, or that you have permission to use the content.
  5. Personal exposure. Anyone posting another members personal details or electronic details (emails, social networking links, etc) without permission will be banned.
  6. All material may be moderated or removed for foul language and commercialized promotional posts.
  7. Always be respectful of other users, the system, and the moderators.
  8. Links to adult content, pages with links to adult content, conterfeit documents or material describing anything against internationally accepted laws will be removed as soon as appropriate.
  9. You agree not to hold TravelBlog or it's members liable for anything stated within the forums or blog posts.
  10. In the event of a court order or request from legitimate authorities, TravelBlog will co-operate and will divulge information such as IP address and email address. In other cases, TravelBlog will protect its members and their privacy as much as possible.
  11. You are responsible for your own posts and content uploaded, you are responsible for any repercussions faced by uploading any content.
  12. TravelBlog is not liable for loss of content and strongly recommend having a backup of photos and written content prior to uploading it onto the site.
  13. Claims of action, flames, and calls to action against any company or person may be removed - again on a case-by-case basis.
  14. Travelblog does not allow any direct 'relationship' requests - there are many 'dating websites' available specifically for this purpose.
  15. Do not post email addresses in forum posts or blog entries (moderators will remove these when seen) - this is for your benefit not ours. Email addresses are harvested from web pages by spammers and unfortunately placed on multinational spam databases - protect your privacy!
  16. Commercial or self-promotion (i.e. backlinks, logos as profile photos, or the like) may be blocked depending on whether such promotion lends to or detracts from the site as a whole, and such content is ultimately at the complete discretion of volunteer moderators and TravelBlog.org administrators.
  17. Insults and/or exposure of personal information should not be made where the individual is identifiable - anywhere on TravelBlog i.e. do not upload photos of people and negatively comment on them if that person is identifiable. Do not post the full name (or give information that would make them easily identifiable) of someone and then proceed to insult or reveal details of their private lives (without permission).
  18. Do not post content that is patently derogatory or demeans another person’s race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or other status.
  19. The best quality blogs are generated by using the provided features (i.e. the photo uploader, TB Code, search box, etc.), however, occasional workarounds are provided based on user requests. When releasing future versions of TravelBlog, we cannot guarantee that such workarounds will continue working or that a replacement workaround will be found.
  20. For the best experience, we highly recommend using Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or IE9 onward as we do not test earlier versions of IE. We cannot guarantee that you are receiving the highest quality experience if you are using an alternate browser.

Photos and Videos

  1. You may only upload media to the TravelBlog website where the you are the owner or copyright holder of the media or have explicit permission from the copyright holder.
  2. Photos should not be uploaded if they are of other people in compromising situations (unless with permission).
  3. Nude or pornographic or explicit images should not be uploaded. Some exceptions can be made (e.g. tribal dress), but photos which break these rules will be removed at the moderators discretion.
  4. Photos of people with insulting or inflammatory captions should not be added. Moderators may remove such photos without notice.

Forum Rules

  1. Be descriptive, specific, and succinct in your forum postings. People from all over the world read here with English as a second language.
  2. Before posting in a forum, please read the charter for that forum. They are listed at the top of the main page for each forum (sub-board) under Charter near the top of the page.
  3. No press releases, newsletters, web pages, images, or copyrighted content may be inserted into TravelBlog posts. Minor fair use excerpts of less than one paragraph (4 sentences) may be used if the content is publicly available. A link to the content is acceptable and appropriate.
  4. Please don't drop promotional urls, signature files, nor specifics that would lead people to commercial sites. Signing your name is fine, however commercialized posts or resume signatures will be edited.
  5. Please keep your language clean and decent. This includes personal inflammatory language as well as obscenities.
  6. Please stay within the topic of the forum you are posting a message in, and within any topic that another poster may have started.
  7. Please try to choose a location as close to the actual location as possible
  8. Since this is interactive and everyone who participates in TravelBlog is "in it together", please treat others the way you wish to be treated. One way to guard against misunderstandings is to read over your response before you post it. Flaming or personal attacks are not allowed or tolerated. Should anyone use inappropriate language, start a personal attack, or engage in hate speech, they will be barred from all further discussions.
  9. The forums and journals are not a venue for advertisements in any way. It will be the sole discretion of TravelBlog and its moderators as to what constitutes an advertisement.
  10. Discussions about moderator or administrator actions are welcome in email or local private messages, but should not be discussed in public forums. This is out of respect for the members and moderators or policy involved.
  11. Forum posts and topics will only be removed at the discretion of the moderators - you can not un-say something in a conversation - the forum here is the same.
  12. All forum posts should at the current time should be in English - this is due to the forum moderation responsibilities - we need to ensure the topics are appropriate. At some point other language forums may be introduced.

Messaging System

  1. The messaging system may not be used to
    • Advertise
    • Promote unrelated or competing services
    • Recruit membership to other services
    • Harass, insult or inflame
  2. The messaging system should not be considered completely private (it is a best effort) and administrators of the site may see messages sent and received here while investigating spam, abuse or bug reports. Please use email, phone calls or better yet face-to-face meetings if you require complete privacy.
  3. The messaging system is not a replacement for email and should be considered only an initial point of contact.

Blog and Account Rules

  1. Signing up a user name that is an obvious domain name or product name will be removed. This is out of unfair promotion considerations as well as trademark implications.
  2. Creating fake accounts in the names of celebrities or high-profile persons will not be allowed - unless you genuinely share the name, names are not unique i.e. there are many "Dave Gorman"s out there.
  3. Accounts may be locked or banned at any time by the site administrators.
  4. Blog entries, images and accounts will be removed on request of the owner.
  5. In the event of a dispute or complaint, TravelBlog may, at a moderators discretion, place your blog entry into a private state while the complaint is reviewed. Please take our recommendations after the review seriously as it may stop further possibly legal action by third parties.
  6. TravelBlog follows the same guidelines as that set by the US Federal Trade Commission, which requires transparency if posting a blog or article for which you have received payment in money, free/discounted accommodation, free/discounted flight, and anything along these lines. This is to protect any readers or consumers who may be reading your content. The disclosure must be very visible and TravelBlog requires that such disclosures be stated at the top of a blog to protect readers. Blogs that break this term can be locked or disabled.

Privacy and Respect

  1. Private accounts, names and blog entries are "best effort" only, we will attempt to ensure that they remain out of the public version of the site, but offer no guarantees.
  2. No photos, text or videos that you need to be private should be posted on TravelBlog.org regardless of the account settings.
  3. Administrators of the site have access to all material posted on the site though this access is used sparingly.
  4. For our part we will do our best to protect your privacy and respect your posts, messages and blog entries. We will not edit or otherwise misrepresent what you write without cause.
  5. We will make a best endeavour to protect your privacy including keeping your email address private and your mail box free from spam.
  6. We will not sell your or any email address.
  7. We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.
Please see our Full Privacy Policy

Copyright and Ownership

  • Posting on TravelBlog grants us a non-exclusive royalty free right to display your photos and journals.
  • You maintain copyright of all your photos and text. This means they can be republished where and when you choose.
  • You maintain the right to remove or edit blog entries at any time.
  • Regarding joint accounts with two or more owners, the primary email holder has the final say on content usage, deletion and so forth.
  • You may only upload media to the TravelBlog website where the you are the owner or copyright holder of the media or have explicit permission from the copyright holder. Fair-use laws apply for public domain and summarised versions of content.
  • All media you add to TravelBlog remains the property of the copyright holder. No title of ownership at any time passes to or is implied to pass to TravelBlog.
  • We will not sell your content beyond the TravelBlog website without your express permission - we have plans for a book, calendars and more.
  • You grant TravelBlog a non-exclusive, royalty-free, license to redistribute and publish on the TravelBlog website, and to share and promote content on third-party sites like Facebook, Twitter, and similar social media to benefit both users and site. In each instance, we give due credit to blogger.
  • We will occasionally use screen shots of your content for promotional purposes both online and offline - where possible we will attribute as appropriate.
  • We reserve the right to distribute content uploaded to TravelBlog to other limited partner sites - we will list those partner sites here; (currently none) and will ensure that you (the account posting the content) is credited correctly - with your chosen display name, and a link to your TravelBlog account.

Advertising

  • We will place discreet adverts alongside much of the content you post on TravelBlog
  • We will make our best effort to ensure that the advertising is in context, tasteful and respectful of the varying views of our members.
Tot: 0.005s; Tpl: 0.003s; cc: 0; qc: 0; dbt: s; 0; w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 848.6kb